We support women writers living and working in the East of England * Winner of Outstanding Contribution to The Arts Award 2018; Shortlisted for the Women In Publishing New Venture Award 2015 & 2016, for Saboteur Best One-Off Event 2015 and Best Anthology 2014 *

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Tuesday, 13 March 2018

Hard as it
is to imagine but back in 2011, in the dark days, there was nothing much going
on to mark International Women’s Day in Norwich which was why Words and Women
was set up. We are not for one moment saying it
is down to us, but now there is so much on offer, even South Bank has zoomed in
with WOW – the Women of the World
Festival - which will take place in the city in April 2018.It has become a busy field with increased awareness.

Of course
Words and Women is so much more than a local event. We’ve run projects further
afield in other parts of the Eastern region and we have our prose competition
which is open to women writers regionally but also nationally (for women over
the age of 40). Our anthologies have even been sold in Shakespeare & Co in
Paris!

But,
ironically, given this is the year when we celebrate the centenary of the
partial suffrage of women, granting women a voice in society, we have decided
we need to put Words and Women on hold.

Words and
Women has achieved much over seven years:

·We have published
6 books or to put it another way 147 women writers

·We have
distributed £30,000 of prize monies and commissions

·We have raised
money for the charities Leeway, Women for Refugee Women and ECPAT (against
child-trafficking)

·We have put on 7
International Women’s Day events, a garden festival and numerous other reading
events around the East of England. These events often involved cross-discipline
work with female theatre directors, comedians, film makers, musicians and
artists, including Karen Reilly from The Neutrinos, Chalk Circle Theatre
Company, Print to The People, Clare Jarrett, Anna Mudeka, Louisa Theobald

·We have presented
a paper at Lit Com: Writing and Communities, we’ve made a short film and have
spoken about our work on T.V. and radio

·We have developed
work for the stage and the page with our Arts Council supported project About,
and we have worked with young girls in schools, and with over 30 women writers from
disadvantaged areas in Norfolk for our Libraries supported project Rural Writes

·Writers we have
worked with have gone on to publish their first novels and collections of
stories. We are proud of them but particularly proud of two women from our
Rural Writes project who were new to writing then and are now studying writing
at postgraduate level

We have also
been:

·Shortlisted for Best Anthology 2014, Saboteur Awards

·Shortlisted for Best One-Off Event 2015, Saboteur Awards

·Shortlisted for the Women in Publishing New
Venture Award 2015 & 2016

However,
Words and Women is run voluntarily. Basically, the organisation is a two-woman
gig and neither of us get paid for our time. So this last year, we engaged in
an operation to see how we could make Words and Women more sustainable for us. But,
as of yet, we’ve not found a way to secure funding.It is frustrating that core funding for
activities like ours is so difficult, if not impossible to achieve.

So we need
time away to do more thinking and planning and to recoup. Hopefully we will
find a way to continue. It hurts to go dark though. It still feels as if Words
and Women has a role to play in supporting and celebrating women writers and
other women creatives, in creating opportunities on a community and professional
level, in trying to offer public space, and in mixing it up.

It hurts to
stop too because, well, a woman’s work is never done. Only last week The
Guardian published a letter from 70 women screenwriters deploring the lack of
opportunity for women writers in television drama.We are living through an extraordinary time
where sexism and inequality is being exposed in every area of life, and yet, if
we really stop to think, the Suffragettes of 100 years ago would probably be
horrified at the lack of progress.

It also hurts
because there is so much still to do to further women’s writing in our
particular way, with warmth, an inclusive ethos, a desire to be exciting and to
expect the best, to reinvent, to be passionate, to give young women
opportunities and to be non-elitist, and to be kind.

Thank you
for being with us over the years. We will be celebrating the centenary of
partial suffrage of women with some small but not insignificant projects
(please see the dedicated blog page for further details), and we will be
holding our last reading for the time being on the 3rd May in
Ipswich for the Suffolk Book League, so if you are in the area then please come
along to that.